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The Garden Tourist’s Mid-Atlantic

Posted in garden to visit, Garden Tour, landscape design with tags , , , on April 30, 2024 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

The cover of The Garden Tourist’s Mid-Atlantic by Jana Milbocker features the Historic Rose Garden at Hershey Gardens in Hershey, Pennsylvania, a garden I have always wanted to visit.

Our 2024 Hosta Catalogue is posted on our website, to read it click here.   We are currently taking orders.

Nursery News:  Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops, hellebores, and/or hostas.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens has been selected as one of the 90 must-visit destination gardens and nurseries in the Mid-Atlantic United States in the wonderful new guidebook The Garden Tourist’s Mid-Atlantic by Jana Milbocker.  This book is a more in depth guide to gardens in our area than Jana’s original 2017 book, The Garden Tourist, which covered 120 gardens from Maine to Pennsylvania.  To read my review of the original book and see many beautiful photos of Carolyn’s Shade Gardens through the seasons, click here.

.The page introducing the New York section of the book shows the names and locations of 25 gardens on the right and suggested daily itineraries, each with a stop for lunch, on the left.

This book is a great resource for those of us who love to visit gardens as it covers each garden in depth and includes contact information, photos, hours, admission prices, amenities, suggested daily itineraries, and recommended restaurants for lunch.  The Mid-Atlantic guide also greatly expands the number of gardens in each state, for example, the original book covered 12 Pennsylvania gardens and this book describes 36. 

You can purchase The Garden Tourist’s Mid-Atlantic on the author’s website here (shipping is free), at Main Point Books and Valley Forge Flowers in Wayne, Pennsylvania, or Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, if you are local, or on Amazon here.

.Mt. Cuba Center in Hockessin, Delaware, is a garden I visit every year.

I have visited, photographed, and written about many of the destinations included in the book, so, from personal experience, I can say that they are well-chosen.  All my favorite Pennsylvania gardens are included: Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, Bartram’s Garden, Laurel Hill East and West, Morris Arboretum, Stoneleigh, Chanticleer, Jenkins Arboretum, Scott Arboretum, Tyler Arboretum, and Longwood Gardens.  And I have already added several of the profiled gardens to my must visit list, including Andalusia, Wyck, and Hershey Gardens, based on the descriptions in the guide.

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The Carolyn’s Shade Gardens page from The Garden Tourist’s Mid-Atlantic.

We are so honored to be included in this wonderful garden resource.  Many of our customers purchased the original guide and really enjoyed using it.  One longtime customer even brought his copy over so I could autograph the Carolyn’s Shade Gardens page!  Autographs are free with hosta orders 😊.  Enjoy!

Carolyn.

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information. If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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Wandlebury Ring

Posted in garden to visit, snowdrops, winter garden, winter interest with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 19, 2023 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

The stable block at Wandlebury Ring was built for James II in the late 17th century and later housed the famous Godolphin Arabian.

On our way back from Bennington Lordship (to read about that garden, click here), Michael and I visited Wandlebury Ring, an Iron Age hillfort outside Cambridge in the Gog Magog Hills, Cambridgeshire.  The hillfort was constructed by an ancient British tribe in 400 BC and later inhabited by the Romans.  In the late 17th century, the inner ramparts and ditch, which circled the fort, were leveled to make way for racing stables for King James II.  A mansion and gardens were also constructed, but all that remains now is the stable block and the fort’s deep, encircling outer ditch.  The site is now a country park owned by Cambridge Past, Present & Future.  For more historical details, click here .

Nursery News:  Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

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The very famous yellow snowdrop ‘Wendy’s Gold’ was first observed in the park in 1974 by Bill Clark, the Warden of Wandlebury Ring, but wasn’t introduced until the early 1990s.  It is a beautiful, bright yellow in our winter sunshine and vigorous in my garden.

Although the history of Wandlebury Ring is quite interesting, the real reason for our visit was to see the naturalized G. plicatus that thrives inside the Ring.  It is from this population that Bill Clark, the Warden of Wandlebury Ring from 1973 to 1998, selected the iconic ‘Wendy’s Gold’, which is named for his wife.  The famous ‘Wendy’s Gold’ was later followed by further, well known yellow selections: ‘Bill Clark’ and ‘Wandlebury Ring’.

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‘Bill Clark’ is an even brighter yellow, which colors the scape, spathe, and pedicel.  However, it is not as vigorous as ‘Wendy’s Gold’ in my garden.

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The last of the famous trio, ‘Wandlebury Ring’.  I don’t grow this snowdrop so the photo was taken in England where lack of winter sun often makes yellow snowdrops have an olive caste.

Wandlebury Ring is a beautiful setting in which to view snowdrops, which occur in sweeps around the mature trees inside the walls:

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Michael stands in a field of Galanthus plicatus with the wall of Wandlebury Ring in the background.

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The setting is very natural with thousands upon thousands of snowdrops in among the grass and winter aconites.

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G. plicatus exhibiting its very distinctive pleated leaves with a whitish center stripe.

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A large beech surrounded by winter aconite and G. plicatus.

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Bill and Wendy Clark still live at Wandlebury Ring.  I have corresponded with Bill extensively about the history of the yellow G. plicatus at Wandlebury, which is fascinating.  Unfortunately, unforeseen events prevented us from getting together when Michael and I were there.   However, Bill still roams the area looking for unusual snowdrops and sent me photos of his recent discoveries:

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A snowdrop with four outer segments instead of the usual three.

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A very elegant snowdrop with twin flowers.

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A new yellow clone.

Thank you, Bill, for the help you have given me in untangling the origins of the Wandlebury snowdrops—you are an inspiration.  This post is dedicated to you!

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Blogs are a lot more fun for everyone, especially the writer, when readers leave comments.  Scroll down to the end of the page to the box where it says “Leave a Reply” and start typing—-it’s easy!

Carolyn

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Note: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information. If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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Snowdrops and History at Benington Lordship Gardens

Posted in garden to visit, snowdrops, winter garden, winter interest with tags , , , , , , , , , , on November 11, 2023 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Benington Lordship is a Georgian manor house constructed in the 1700s near the ruins of a Norman castle built around 1130.

Michael and I have traveled to England many times for work and pleasure, but we had never been to Cambridge.  In February 2023, we spent four nights there touring the city and visiting snowdrop venues.  It is a wonderful city and a great place to visit gardens.  We packed a lot in, including Benington Lordship Gardens in Benington, East Hertfordshire, which is about 45 minutes from Cambridge.

Nursery News:  Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

As you come up the drive, the first thing you see is the Folly built in 1832 with snowdrops on the left cascading down the hill to the moat.

Benington Castle was originally built around 1130 by the de Valogne family.  It was destroyed in 1212 leaving only the bottom courses of the keep.  In the 1700s, the Caesar family built a Georgian manor house, Benington Lordship, adjacent to the ruins of the Norman castle keep.  In 1832, the Folly was added to join the manor house to the Norman ruins.  It consists of a neo-Norman two-story gatehouse with an arch and two circular towers plus a wall and a summer house.

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The Folly joins the manor house—on the right side, you can just see the tower—to the Norman ruins.

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Looking through the arch towards the interior courtyard.

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Detail on the arch

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The gatehouse viewed from inside the courtyard.

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The summer house—as you can see, snowdrops are everywhere in the gardens.

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To the untrained eye, the gatehouse looks quite authentic down to the crumbling towers.

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The actual Norman ruins are in the back left of the snowdrop and aconite bed with the gatehouse peeking out behind them.

There is no brochure explaining the history of Benington Castle so it wasn’t until I researched Benington Lordship that I understood the provenance of all the buildings.  For history buffs, Historic England gives a very detailed account of the site here.

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After viewing the Folly, we descended some stone steps into the moat.

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The moat is a narrow path with both of its very steep sides filled to the brim with snowdrops.

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The snowdrops are mostly G. nivalis, the common snowdrop, and its double form ‘Flore Pleno’.

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The back wall of the moat.

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Double common snowdrop, G. nivalis ‘Flore Pleno’

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There were some beautiful vistas of snowdrops mixed with winter aconite, Eranthis hyemalis.

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A lovely clump of G. plicatus, sometimes called Crimean snowdrop.

Although there was an area of the garden with named snowdrop cultivars, there was nothing that you won’t see in more impressive collections.  It is the picturesque buildings and the snowdrops lining the moat and surrounding the Norman ruins that made Benington Lordship worth visiting.  For details about visiting during snowdrop season, click here.

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Blogs are a lot more fun for everyone, especially the writer, when readers leave comments.  Scroll down to the end of the page to the box where it says “Leave a Reply” and start typing—-it’s easy!

Carolyn

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Note: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information. If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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Wisley’s Winter Garden

Posted in garden to visit, landscape design, Shade Shrubs, shrubs for winter, winter, winter garden, winter interest with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 5, 2023 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

At Wisley, red-flowered hybrid witch hazel ‘Ruben’ provides a vivid contrast to a gold needled conifer and blooming heath.

The day after we visited the Savill Garden last February, we faced a long drive to Avon Bulbs in the south of England.  However, at the suggestion of John Anderson, we decided we would visit RHS Garden Wisley, the flagship of the Royal Horticultural Society’s gardens on our way.  When we arrived, we had one hour for touring the 240 acre garden and decided to do the Winter Walk though we wish we had had more time to visit other areas.  

Nursery News:  Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

Hybrid witch hazel ‘Pallida’ with a blue needled, creeping juniper.

The Wisley website provides an excellent overview of the the highlights of the Winter Walk with in depth descriptions and photos of 10 locations.  Included at the end is a Winter Walk planting list with clickable entries containing photos and details about each plant.  You can read it here.  During our hurried visit, I captured a random sample, which I will share below.

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The amazing silver buds of ‘Winter Liebe’ edgeworthia underplanted with winter-blooming daffodils.

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I was very impressed with the witch hazels at Wisley, here the hybrid ‘Harry’.  They provide a multitude of brightly colored flowers in the winter landscape.

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A closeup of the flowers on ‘Harry’.

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Shrub dogwoods are grown for their winter branch color, here bloodtwig dogwood, Cornus sanguinea ‘Magic Flame’.

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Conifers provide a great contrast in the winter garden, here hybrid witch hazels ‘Pallida’ and ‘Robert’ with a blue spruce.

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Although snowdrops were not a focus of the garden, they were sprinkled through out, adding a cheerful white accent, here ‘Sibbertoft No 2’.

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The garden featured plenty of hellebores, including ‘Anna’s Red’ from the Frostkiss series.

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Frostkiss ‘Molly’s White’

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Hybrid witch hazel ‘Vesna’ with a small variegated shrub, maybe a euonymus, providing a beautiful contrast.

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This Japanese pink pussy willow ‘Mount Aso’ really stood out.

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The white stems of  ‘Winter Lightning’ with the woven branches of golden willow ‘Yelverton’.

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The woven branches of golden willow ‘Golden Ness’ edge the pond.

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A gorgeous combination of hybrid witchhazel underplanted with ‘Ice ‘n’ Roses White’ hybrid hellebore.

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A close up of hellebore ‘Ice ‘n’ Roses White’, which is early blooming and a great performer in my garden.

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The winter garden at Wisley is well worth visiting if you are in England in February.

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Blogs are a lot more fun for everyone, especially the writer, when readers leave comments.  Scroll down to the end of the page to the box where it says “Leave a Reply” and start typing—-it’s easy!

Carolyn

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Note: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information. If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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The Savill Garden in Winter

Posted in garden to visit, landscape design, winter, winter interest with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 29, 2023 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Bright colors from bark, leaves, and flowers are everywhere at the Savill Garden on a bleak February 1.

My earliest snowdrops, Galanthus bursanus, are blooming, but before I get caught up in that mania, I thought I would devote a post to a gorgeous winter garden we visited in England.  On February 1, 2023, Michael and I arrived at Heathrow Airport in London and went directly to the Savill Garden.  We were there at the invitation of John Anderson, Keeper of the Gardens for Windsor Great Park, the 5,000 acres of gardens surrounding Windsor Castle.  John graciously took the morning off to show us around.

Nursery News:  Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

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Around every corner at the Savill Garden is a beautiful vista featuring plants grown to provide color in winter, here pollarded golden willow stems.

The 35 acre Savill Garden was commissioned in 1932 by George V and created by Eric Savill.  Along with several other gardens, Savill is part of Windsor Great Park, which is held by the Crown Estate.  This means that, although the king or queen does not personally own the garden, it is theirs as long as they wear the crown.  John Anderson reported to Queen Elizabeth II and now to King Charles III, and, as avid gardeners, the queen and king have both been involved with planning at Savill.  For more on the Windsor Great Park and the Savill Garden, please read my post about John Anderson’s trip to Winterthur by clicking here.

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As you enjoy the photos below, think about incorporating some of the amazing winter interest plants into your own garden: 

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Giant rhubarb, Gunnera sp., is covered with its own large leaves for winter protection.

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The garden features many forms of shrub dogwoods grown for their winter branch color, including bloodtwig dogwood, Cornus sanguinea ‘Anny’s Winter Orange’.

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A close up of the trunk of one of the birches in the first photo, showing the incredibly white bark of ‘Silver Shadow’ Himalayan birch paired with the flowers and winter green foliage of Helleborus x sternii “Blackthorn Strain”.

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Tartarian dogwood, Cornus alba ‘Sibirica’

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‘Magic Flame’ bloodtwig dogwood surrounded by the broad purple leaves of bergenia, flowering heath, and a winter-blooming daffodil.

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On the other side of ‘Magic Flame’ are the ornamental canes of ‘Golden Vale’ white-stemmed bramble.

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‘Phoenix’ snakebark maple, a cross between our native tree and a Chinese relative.

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The garden features many different forms of witchhazel, including ‘Diane’ above.

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Snowdrops are sprinkled around the garden, here with the many bright shades of chartreuse that light up this area.

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A form of Acer tegmentosum, striped maple, called ‘Valley Phantom’.

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Early-blooming hellebores, here Helleborus foetidus, are massed through out the winter garden.

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‘Sauwala White’ Himalayan birch

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A glimpse out towards the rest of the Savill Garden, which would be worth visiting anytime but is spectacular in winter!

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Thanks to John Anderson for spending so much time outside with us on a very cold winter day (photo of Carolyn and John).

 

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Blogs are a lot more fun for everyone, especially the writer, when readers leave comments.  Scroll down to the end of the page to the box where it says “Leave a Reply” and start typing—-it’s easy!

Carolyn

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Note: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information. If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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Kylemore Abbey and Victorian Walled Garden in Ireland

Posted in garden to visit, landscape design with tags , , , , , , , , , on August 18, 2019 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland

During our recent trip to Ireland, Michael and I visited Kylemore Abbey and its lovely and historic Victorian walled garden.  The abbey is located in the Connemara region in the northwest of Ireland, an area known for its scenic beauty as well as its retention of traditional Gaelic language and culture.  This was our favorite part of Ireland with majestic mountains, gorgeous beaches, Caribbean blue water, peat bogs, Norman outposts, ruined cottages, hidden lakes (or loughs as they are called there), free-roaming sheep, and best of all, very few people.

Nursery News:  Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  We are open from approximately December 15 to June 15. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops to US customers only.  For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and cell number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

 

The abbey was carved into the side of the hills surrounding Lough Pollaacapull so that it could be perfectly reflected in the waters of the lake.  It was too windy the day we were there to capture the reflection!

Kylemore Abbey was built by Margaret and Mitchell Henry, a prominent London doctor of Irish descent.  When he inherited the family business in the late 1860s, he became one of the wealthiest men in Britain.  He bought what was then Kylemore Hunting Lodge and the surrounding 18,000 acres and built Kylemore Castle for his wife Margaret and their many children.  He gave up his medical practice and became a leading champion of the rights of the poor, representing Ireland as a Parliamentary MP in London. 

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Today the castle is owned by an order of Benedictine nuns originally from Ypres, Belgium.  The history of how they arrived at Kylemore, as presented in the abbey museum, is fascinating.  Due to the suppression of religious houses in England, Benedictine Houses were founded in Belgium, starting in 1598.  The current owners of Kylemore originated from a Benedictine House formed in 1665 in Ypres to provide a religious community for Irish women persecuted in Ireland.  The Ypres Abbey attracted the daughters of Irish nobility and enjoyed the patronage of many influential Irish families.  When Ypres Abbey was destroyed in the early days of World War One, the nuns sought refuge in England, and in 1920 were given Kylemore Castle as their new home.

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The view from Kylemore Abbey to Lough Pollaacapull and the surrounding hills is spectacular.

After they arrived at Kylemore, which then became an abbey instead of a castle, the nuns reopened their international boarding school and started a day school for local girls, which closed in 2010.  Today, the nuns make soap and delicious chocolate sold at the abbey gift shop and oversee the workings of the historic estate and gardens. The ground floor of Kylemore Abbey is a museum that preserves the furnishings of the Henry family, telling their story, and documenting the nuns flight from Ypres as well as the history of their school—it is well worth a visit. 

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The main gate of the Victorian walled garden at Kylemore Abbey.  The walls are made of brick and granite to absorb heat and shelter the garden from wind and frost as well as the sheep that roam freely all over the Connemara region.  The tricolor beds planted in stripes were a common Victorian garden feature called a ribbon bed.

The Kylemore Victorian walled garden, built at the same time as the castle, covers six acres and once contained 21 heated glass houses and employed 40 gardeners.  It was so advanced for its time that it was compared favorably to Kew Gardens in London.  However, over the years it declined so that by 1995 it was completely overgrown with brambles and trees and most of the glass houses were destroyed.  The Benedictine nuns began an extensive renovation that year based on historic photos from the 1870s as well as the structures and topography revealed when the encroaching plants were cleared.  The garden reopened in 2000, recapturing most of its former glory.  It is planted with exclusively Victorian plant varieties using Victorian garden designs.

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Apple and pear trees are espaliered inside the walls.

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The garden is in two parts divided by a mountain stream.  This photo shows the eastern half, which contains the formal flower garden, the glass houses, the tool shed, and the living quarters for the gardeners.

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The typical formality of a Victorian garden.

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a renovated glass house

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remains of some of the other glass houses

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fruit storage and potting shed

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The tool shed contains tools and other relics recovered during renovation.

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A window in the “bothy” where the garden laborers lived.  Employees at Kylemore Abbey were well paid during a time of desperate poverty in Ireland.

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The head gardener’s house was preserved and shows the respected position he held at the estate.

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The house is prominently positioned at the top of the garden, giving the head gardener a good view over the garden and its workers.  The inside of the house shows the privileged lifestyle of the head gardener’s family.

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The mountain stream, which divides the two halves of the garden.  The trees and plants surrounding it provide a shady retreat.

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I was particularly taken by this rodgersia along the stream.  I was unable to find out its exact name or species.

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The western half of the garden houses the vegetable garden, herbaceous border, fruit trees, a rockery, and herb garden

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the orchard

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the perennial garden

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rhubarb patch

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No matter what direction you look, the garden is surrounded by mountains.

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Next up a look at a few more interesting aspects of the Connemara region—peat bogs, invasive plants, sheep farming, and beaches.

Carolyn

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Nursery Happenings: You can sign up to receive catalogues and emails about nursery events by sending your full name, location, and cell number (for back up contact use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Subscribing to my blog does not sign you up to receive this information.  Please indicate if you will be shopping at the nursery or are interested in mail order snowdrops only.

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a local retail nursery in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S., zone 6b/7a. The only plants that we mail order are snowdrops and only within the US.

Facebook: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens has a very active Facebook Page where I post single photos, garden tips, and other information that doesn’t fit into a blog post. You can look at my Facebook page here or click the Like button on my right sidebar here.

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information. If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

18 Comments »

Tudor Walled Garden in Kilkenny Ireland

Posted in garden to visit, hellebores, landscape design with tags , , , , , , , , , , on July 23, 2019 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

heritage2-e1464010072611-001 Tudor walled garden at Rothe House in Kilkenny, Ireland (courtesy of the Rothe House Museum website)

During our recent trip to Ireland, Michael and I visited the lovely and interesting town of Kilkenny, home to Ireland’s “Medieval Mile”.  We were especially interested in seeing the Rothe House Museum and Garden but very much enjoyed the whole town.  The Rothe House is actually three houses and three courtyards plus a large walled garden, all built between 1594 and 1610 by John Rothe Fitz Piers, a merchant, landowner, and Mayor of Kilkenny.  He and his wife Rose Archer and their 12 children lived there until John’s death in 1620 when his oldest son Peter took over the business and property.

Nursery News:  Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  We are open from approximately December 15 to June 15. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops to US customers only.  For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and cell number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

 

Street view of the Rothe House (courtesy of Ireland Dept. of Environment, Heritage, and Local Government)

Between 2005 and 2007, the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, which owns the building complex, excavated the walled garden area, which runs from the back of the mansion on Parliament Street to the city wall.  The excavations exposed the original layout of the very large Tudor era garden, including its planting beds, paths, walls, and even the seeds and pollen of the 17th century plants.  Over 2,000 artifacts from the period were recovered.  Based on these discoveries, the garden has been meticulously restored using plants from the 17th century.

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The entrance to the Rothe House walled garden is through this archway from an inner courtyard.

This garden is very large for an urban, walled garden.  The lower garden near the house contains vegetables and herbs, while the upper garden is an orchard.  It was pouring rain the day we were there—the only day it rained while we were in Ireland—which made it difficult to take photos.  The weather was also not conducive to reading all the explanatory signs, which would have been very helpful when putting this post together.  Nevertheless, I think you will enjoy seeing the garden, and I hope you will visit it if you are ever in Ireland.

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Looking back over the vegetable and herb garden towards the house.

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Everything was very well maintained.

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borage and other edible and medicinal plants including artichokes at the back right

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As usual, I envy the delphiniums as it is too hot and humid to grow them in southeastern Pennsylvania.

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Another plant that grows much better in Ireland: Corsican hellebore.  We can grow it in PA, but the leaves, which unlike hybrid hellebores have the flowers at the end of their stalks, always get ruined over the winter and look awful when the flowers open.  I forgo the flowers, trim the plant to the ground, and enjoy the fresh leaves for the rest of the season.

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Michael, bundled up against the rain, gives some perspective on the mammoth size that Corsican hellebores attain in the mild Irish climate.

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Luckily, hybrid hellebores do beautifully in Pennsylvania and in Ireland.

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Lupines don’t grow in the Pennsylvania heat and humidity either but were beautiful all over Ireland.

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I have tried this Jacob’s ladder, Polemonium caeruleum, several times in my garden and see it for sale at many local nurseries in Pennsylvania.  Again, it is unsuited to our climate—now I know where it does grow well.  Luckily, native dwarf Jacob’s ladder, P. reptans, does beautifully in Pennsylvania.

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More delphinium envy!

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A lovely meadow like area between the lower and upper garden.

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Looking from the lower garden into the orchard

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the orchard

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Providing a home for orchard pollinators

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Next up a Victorian walled garden at Kylemore Abbey.

Carolyn

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Nursery Happenings: You can sign up to receive catalogues and emails about nursery events by sending your full name, location, and cell number (for back up contact use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Subscribing to my blog does not sign you up to receive this information.  Please indicate if you will be shopping at the nursery or are interested in mail order snowdrops only.

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a local retail nursery in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S., zone 6b/7a. The only plants that we mail order are snowdrops and only within the US.

Facebook: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens has a very active Facebook Page where I post single photos, garden tips, and other information that doesn’t fit into a blog post. You can look at my Facebook page here or click the Like button on my right sidebar here.

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information. If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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Native Plants for June and Beyond

Posted in garden to visit, green gardening, landscape design, my garden, native plants, organic gardening, Shade Gardening, Shade Perennials, sustainable living with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 19, 2019 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Indian pink or spigelia is the most requested plant at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens.  None of our suppliers have any luck growing it in pots, so we are trying to grow it ourselves for sale in 2020.

A long time ago, Carolyn’s Shade Gardens made sustainable practices one of its missions.   We have fulfilled this in many ways, including making a wide range of native plants available to our customers, showcasing native plants in our display gardens, and getting rid of our lawn.  Since we purchased the property in 1983, all our gardens have been maintained organically without herbicides, chemical fertilizers, or supplemental water.  We mulch with ground leaves, and never use potentially toxic hardwood mulch.

Nursery News:  Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops to US customers only.  For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and cell number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

 

The long spires of black cohosh are one of the highlights of our garden in June.

You can read more about our sustainable practices and why they are important in these posts: 

Your Native Woodland: If You Build it They Will Come, how to create your own woodland filled with native plants

Your Native Woodland: If You Build it They Will Come, Part 2, more native plants for your woodland

My Thanksgiving Oak Forest, the importance of native plants to our survival

Your Most Precious Garden Resource, step-by-step guide to mulching with ground leaves 

Letting Go Part 1: The Lawn, the dangers of lawn chemicals to humans, pets, and the environment 

Do You Know Where Your Mulch Comes From?, toxic substances in shredded hardwood mulch

Strike a Blow for the Environment in your own Yard, how to incorporate large quantities of native plants into your garden

Looking back over these posts, I realized that many of them feature native plants that bloom in the spring.  As 2/3 of the plants in our display gardens are native, I wanted to highlight some of the summer- and fall-blooming varieties.  Every photo is taken in our garden, and every plant is native, most to Pennsylvania.  If you want to know the Latin name, click on the photo.

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We have two gigantic walnuts in our display gardens and have no trouble growing native plants under them.  Shown here is oakleaf hydrangea, my favorite of all the hydrangeas, surrounded by blue wood asters, which bloom in October.

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My favorite oakleaf hydrangea is ‘Snowflake’ with gorgeous double flowers.  Double flowers are not as good for pollinators, so the majority of our oakleafs have single flowers.

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Blue wood asters and foamflowers make a weed-free groundcover under our walnuts.

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Coral bells or heucheras add color to the garden all season.  However, many of the coral bells marketed to gardeners do not grow well in the mid-Atlantic.  At Carolyn’s Shade Gardens we only sell heucheras that thrive in this region, including my favorite ‘Berry Smoothie’.

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Our woodland is quiet in summer and fall but blooming along the entrance path is the native shrub, flowering raspberry.  I love it for its light green almost tropical leaves and large raspberry-colored flowers.

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Maidenhair ferns with their delicate and unusual leaf pattern and wiry black stems are ornamental all season.  They spread slowly to make a bigger and bigger patch.

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Our Ashe magnolia with its gigantic white flowers just finished blooming.  At its feet are sweeping stands of culver’s root, which will bloom in late July and August.

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White baneberry is just starting to make its creepy fruit, which looks just like its other common name: doll’s eyes.  I like everything about this plant—its delicate shrub-like habit, lovely white flowers, and unique berries.

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The yellow and green variegated leaves of ‘Golden Shadows’ pagoda dogwood are beautiful all season, while the spiderwort at its base produces lovely blue flowers now, and the New York ironweed next to it will bloom in August and September.

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Giant Solomon’s seal on the right towers over non-native Solomon’s seal to its left.  In the foreground is twinleaf, whose elegant and unsual leaves look good all season.

.Evergreen hart’s tongue fern (in front) provides interest all year.  In the back, our gigantic stand of bottlebrush buckeye is getting ready to put on its breath-taking show.

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We have had no luck with native bleeding-hearts, which we have tried in many different locations in the garden, until it planted itself in the stump of our dead ash tree.  Sometimes you have to let the plants decide where they want to grow!

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Indian pink on the left with variegated ‘Oehme’ palm sedge on the right and fall-blooming blue stemmed goldenrod at its base.  Palm sedge is a great grass for shade—it happily grows in full shade in our garden.

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Indian pink enjoys this sunny, dry location, even re-blooming in the fall.  Over it is a fringe tree, which blooms in late spring.

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We are not native plant purists as our business also specializes in snowdrops, hellebores, and hostas.  However, we believe that gardeners should try to incorporate as many native plants in their gardens as possible for the reasons that author Doug Tallamy so eloquently describes in his ground-breaking book Bringing Nature Home.  It’s not about saving the planet: it’s about the survival of humans, including our children and grandchildren, on the planet.

Carolyn

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Nursery Happenings: You can sign up to receive catalogues and emails about nursery events by sending your full name, location, and cell number (for back up contact use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Subscribing to my blog does not sign you up to receive this information.  Please indicate if you will be shopping at the nursery or are interested in mail order snowdrops only.

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a local retail nursery in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S., zone 6b/7a. The only plants that we mail order are snowdrops and only within the US.

Facebook: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens has a very active Facebook Page where I post single photos, garden tips, and other information that doesn’t fit into a blog post. You can look at my Facebook page here or click the Like button on my right sidebar here.

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information. If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

5 Comments »

The Garden Tourist

Posted in bulbs for shade, garden to visit, hosta, landscape design, my garden, native plants, Shade Gardening, Shade Perennials with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 8, 2019 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

The cover of The Garden Tourist by Jana Milbocker features the teacup garden at Chanticleer in Wayne, Pennsylvania, one of my favorite gardens.

Nursery News:  Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops within the US.  For catalogues and announcements of local events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com and indicate whether you are interested in snowdrops, hellebores, and/or hostas.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog..

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens has been selected as one of the 120 must visit destination gardens and nurseries in the Northeast United States in the wonderful guidebook The Garden Tourist by Jana Milbocker.  This book is a great resource for those of us who love to visit gardens as it covers Maine through Pennsylvania with detailed information on each entry, including photos, suggested daily itineraries, and nearby restaurants.  You can purchase The Garden Tourist on Amazon here, or at Valley Forge Flowers in Wayne, Pennsylvania, if you are local. 

I have visited, photographed, and written about many of the destinations included in the book, so, from personal experience, I can say that they are well-chosen.  As a sample, here are the featured Pennsylvania gardens and nurseries:  Ambler Arboretum, Bartram’s Garden, Carolyn’s Shade Gardens, Chanticleer, Highlands Mansion & Garden, Hortulus Farm Garden & Nursery, Longwood Gardens, Meadowbrook Farm, Shofuso Japanese Garden, Scott Arboretum, Terrain, and Wyck Garden.

Nursery News:  Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops to US customers only.  For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, mailing address, and cell number to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

The Carolyn’s Shade Gardens page from The Garden Tourist.

We are so honored to be included in this wonderful garden resource.  Many of our customers have already purchased it and are looking forward to putting it to use.  One longtime customer even brought his copy over so I could autograph the Carolyn’s Shade Gardens page!  I thought it would be fun to give my readers, especially my international followers, a more in depth photographic tour of Carolyn’s Shade Gardens.  The photographs used in this post were taken from 2010 to 2019.  Enjoy!

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Stone stairs lead from the nursery area, past the original entrance to the two-room gardener’s cottage that is now our home, to the Main Terrace.  All the areas of our garden have names, which I will capitalize.  That way my husband Michael and I can communicate about garden maintenance.  During our last open house, visitors were overheard referring to “the team of workers who [must] take care of the gardens.”  We are still laughing and wondering when our team will arrive!  Michael does most of the maintenance, and I help when I can.  5/7/2012

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On the way down the stairs, you pass the entrance to the Main Rock Garden.  It is mostly a winter garden filled with snowdrops, snowflakes, hardy cyclamen, winter aconite, and other early bulbs.  4/25/2016

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The Main Terrace outside the front door in early spring.  4/15/2012

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The Main Terrace a month later.  5/15/2015

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Michael’s pride and joy and a major feature of the Main Terrace is our gorgeous wisteria.  Plein Air painters come to capture it on canvas every year.  4/29/2011

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One of my favorite color combinations on the Main Terrace: ‘Magic Carpet’ spiraea, ‘Gold Heart’ bleeding-heart, and Spanish bluebells emerging from a silver-variegated ornamental grass.  4/15/2012

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We call the lowest of our three terraces the Orange and Purple Garden.  Here ‘Paliban’ lilac blooms over a collection of small hostas with orange geum in the foreground.  5/10/2015

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The Orange and Purple Garden features a grass oval surrounded by stepping stones inter-planted with sedums, geums, thyme, moss phlox and other low plants.  5/8/2011

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The Orange and Purple Garden in fall when our coral bark maple ‘Sango-kaku’ is the star of the show.  11/2/2013

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in front of the terraces in the lawn area is a very old American hornbeam with lots of surface roots and a dense canopy requiring plants that can handle full dry shade.  The Hornbeam Garden features Japanese woodland primroses (in flower above), Athyrium-type ferns (Japanese painted, lady, and ‘Ghost’ ferns), hellebores, cardamine, golden groundsel, and pulmonarias, among other plants.  4/15/2012

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The Chain Link Strip Garden (don’t ask) along the right boundary of our property is a great place to grow hostas because all the water from the driveway drains through here—hostas love water.  Blue-leafed ‘Neptune’ is on the left, and 2007 Hosta of the Year ‘Paradigm’ is on the right behind a native Carolina allspice.  ‘Paradigm’ measures 60″ wide.  6/7/2019

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Native ‘Golden Shadows’ pagoda dogwood is dwarfed by this ‘Great Expectations’ hosta in the Chain Link Strip Garden.  Hosta experts tell me it is the biggest specimen they have ever seen at 52″ wide.  6/7/2019

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All the way at the bottom of the yard where it is actually consistently moist are our Production Beds where we grow shade plants to sell at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens.  Pictured are ‘Old Brick Reds’ primroses, two types of pulmonaria, and golden groundsel.  5/10/2015

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Walking back uphill towards the woodland, you pass our River of Phlox ‘Sherwood Purple’.  Native, evergreen creeping phlox makes an excellent groundcover with gorgeous purple, blue, pink or white flowers, depending on which cultivar you plant.  In the River, we have planted a large part of our snowdrop collection, which blooms December through March before the phlox flowers extend.  4/24/2019

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In late winter, snowdrops and winter aconite begin to emerge along the woodland path.  3/2/2019

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The snowdrops have been multiplying here for over 100 years and fill the Woodland with white when they open.  3/26/2015

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When the snowdrops and aconite are done, the Woodland bursts into bloom with mostly native wildflowers—the native, white redbud trees play a starring role.  4/15/2019

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Plants native to Pennsylvania fill the Woodland, here mayapples, golden groundsel, and Virginia bluebells.  4/25/2017

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Epimediums, daffodils, cinnamon ferns, and Celandine poppies replace the February-blooming aconite whose leaves are still visible at their base.  4/26/2015

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Natives dwarf Jacob’s ladder, black cohosh, and foamflower line the path.  5/10/2015

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The Lower Deck Garden provides early color from hellebores, ‘Mohawk’ viburnum, pink old-fashioned bleeding-hearts, and the rose-colored new leaves of ‘Butterfly’ Japanese maple.  4/26/2015

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The Upper Deck Garden comes into its own later in May with Hosta nigrescens, pulmonaria, Spanish bluebells, and variegated Solomon’s seal, all echoing the blue and silver garden under the Kentucky coffee tree across the path.  ‘Butterfly’ has assumed its main season color of green and white but will turn pink again in the fall.  5/6/2011

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The Kentucky Coffee Tree Garden across from the deck is filled with silver and blue plants, including ‘Ghost’ fern, ‘Bunny Blue’ sedge, ‘El Nino’ hosta, white bigroot geranium, variegated Japanese kerria, and ‘Jack Frost’ and ‘Dawson’s White’ brunnera.  5/27/2012

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Sugar maples, behind the Kentucky coffee tree on the left and the two giant black walnuts center and right, light up the woodland in fall.  For scale the ‘Butterfly’ Japanese maple is on the far right.  10/27/2010

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Moving up the hill, ‘Eye Declare’ hosta steals the show when it emerges in the Sycamore Garden in mid-spring (for orientation, you can see the Blue and Silver Garden in the top right of the photo).  The trees are actually London plane trees but the garden’s name stuck.  5/8/2011

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In early summer, native Indian pinks (spigelia) fill the Sycamore Garden and hummingbirds vsit from miles around.  6/7/2019

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Above the Sycamore Garden, behind the carriage house, is Hosta Hill, filled with hostas of all sizes plus epimediums, ferns, and hellebores.  5/26/2019

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I have a special place in my heart for our Mini Hosta Rock Garden, featuring mini hostas in a multitude of colors and sizes plus a wide assortment of dwarf plants, including ferns, irises, epimediums, conifers, lady’s mantles, and sedums, among others.  6/9/2015

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The garden is never without flowers unless deep snow covers the snowdrops, which start blooming in mid-October and finish in late March.  12/10/2013

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Michael and I rest in deep winter waiting for the cycle to begin again as soon as the snow melts.  2/21/2014

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Although it may seem like winter-, spring-, and early summer-blooming plants predominate, our garden is beautiful in late summer and fall too—I just don’t photograph it then.  I enjoyed writing this post and seeing our garden develop and change over the 10 years that these photographs were taken.  I hope you enjoyed the tour too.

Carolyn.

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information. If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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What’s Up at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens?

Posted in bulbs for shade, garden to visit, landscape design, my garden, native plants, Shade Gardening with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 15, 2019 by Carolyn @ Carolyns Shade Gardens

Just a few days ago our woodland was empty, but now it is filled with flowers.

We think that the winter garden at our nursery is gorgeous.  But it is still sparse with lots of empty patches of brown leaves even though it is filled with blooming hellebores, snowdrops, cyclamen, winter aconite, and other late winter bulbs.  It’s not until early spring that our woodland explodes with color, mostly from native plants taking advantage of all the sunlight before the trees leaf out.  I thought you might like to see what that looks like, especially if you visited more than a week ago.  Our many epimediums are also in full bloom!

Nursery News:  Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade.  The only plants that we ship are snowdrops to US customers only.  For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and cell number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

 

a small field of native Virginia blue bells

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Epimediums and European wood anemones play a starring role.

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Native cinnamon ferns erupt through the winter aconite.

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Even with all the color below, the three native white-flowered redbuds steal the show.

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Pine needle paths draw visitors through the woods.

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Yellow and blue are my favorite spring colors: here Virginia bluebells with native Celandine poppy and yellow wood anemone.

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Yellow and white is pretty stunning too: here Celandine poppy and white wood anemone.

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‘New York Night’ hellebore and native yellow violets

And now for the epimediums:

Red epimedium, E. x rubrum, is a great spreader.

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Sulphur yellow epimediums, E. pinnatum subsp. colchicum, look great with the blue of pulmonarias.

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‘Purple Prince’ epimedium with ‘Pagoda’ dogtooth violets in the background.

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‘Cherry Tart’ epimedium

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The leaves and flowers of ‘Domino’ epimedium are especially lovely, and it flowers twice.

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‘Yubae’ epimedium

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I love orange flowers, and Epimedium x warleyense produces a lot.  It’s also a great groundcover.

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‘Bandit’ epimdium is the perfect size for my miniature hosta rock garden, and its white flowers really stand out against its black-bordered leaves.

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I love this combination: ‘Tama No Gempi’ epimedium and ‘Little Wonder’ mini hosta.

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I had to leave so much out—maybe there will be a part two.

Carolyn

Nursery Happenings: You can sign up to receive catalogues and emails about nursery events by sending your full name, location, and cell number (for back up contact use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com.  Subscribing to my blog does not sign you up to receive this information.  Please indicate if you will be shopping at the nursery or are mail order snowdrops only.

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a local retail nursery in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S., zone 6b/7a. The only plants that we mail order are snowdrops and only within the US.

Facebook: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens has a Facebook Page where I post single photos, garden tips, and other information that doesn’t fit into a blog post. You can look at my Facebook page here or click the Like button on my right sidebar here.

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information. If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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